Of 2013 and of budget 2013

It's already March of 2013

Looking back at Goal 2013 and another of my old posts on 2013 Targets, I come to realised my thinking, goals and direction has changed quite a bit.

The Original Goals
1) Goal of $2k/month dividends
First and foremost, I am no longer looking to achieve $2k dividends a month, but planning to maintain the current ~$1.2k per month for a period of time. There's nothing much in the market to buy, and I see no reason to jump in just to achieve this goal.

2) Further building up ExamWorld
I admit that I did not manage to do anything on this website. However, there's still traffic and I believe it might have been somewhat useful to a number of students. Going forward, this will form part of a strategy to further boost the tuition centre.

3) Building the tuition centre
While my main aim is to help as many people as possible, it is still a business, and the tutors need money to eat. Certainly, I have great trust in the centre's capability, and personally, 78% of my A levels physics students achieved A in the 2012 A Levels.

Additionally, it was last year where I had this student whose family was so poor they rented out a room just to pay for her lessons. One of my tutors even wanted to pay for 1 month of her lessons, having won the 4D lottery. Having known that, I gave her the last month of lessons free under my O level physics tutelage. Eventually, it was a happy ending as she got an A2 for pure physics. :)

Such students make me want to work harder, think of ways to reach out to them, and offer as much help as I can. Currently, the centre isn't ready to provide too much help, but I hope to be able to use IT as a way to help these students at the centre in the future.

4) Reaching a million in investable assets
With the stock market boom, my portfolio has increased slightly over $300k, without further input of cash. I cashed out some, but not yet for CPL, CMA and GLP.

My other assets probably add up to just below $100k, so probably I have about $400k in assets. While not little, it's not a lot either.

5) Publishing my notes
As part of my tuition business strategy, the notes probably would not be published and sold, but as part of the resources of the tuition centre.


Having looked through all the above, and thinking hard, I have come to the following for the years ahead.

Extremely Poor Service from OpenNet and Singtel

Quick update: OpenNet is finally up on 24th December. Case Closed.

This is a rant on my utterly disappointing service by Singtel and OpenNet on their fibre optic, specifically OpenNet, the company laying the fibre optic cables and doing such a bad job on it.

The story goes...
Earlier in November, my girlfriend signed up for a fibre optic package (fibre optic internet, phone line, mio TV) from Singtel. It was installed on the last week of November. Everything was well, the internet was fast, my girlfriend's mum was very happy with the mio TV channels. Finally she have interesting channels to watch while at home.

2013 target: Building Assets to create more passive income streams

I was thinking back on the times when I just graduated in May 2008. That was when I finished university exams and started work as an engineer, almost 4.5 years ago.

Fast forward to 2012 now, I resigned from my engineer job and went into tuition full-time. Seriously, I still wonder if it was the correct move. But as my girlfriend told me, look forward and don't look back. It's never easy to strike out solo. [On hindsight, my previous company is freezing the pay of its employees a second time since 2008 due to losses.]

Without the security of a stable income, and with a little more time on my hand these days, I begin to think of how to how to bring on more income streams to supplement the meagre tuition income I'm receiving. My main consideration now is not to just bring on more business for tuition, but to build value and assets out of this business.


In essence, I need to build assets as much as I can. Asset rich cash poor strategy. The areas I will be looking at....

1) Building Paper Assets, i.e. equity portfolio.
In 2012, I have made some changes to my portfolio. The main strategy is to sell stocks with lower dividend yield while realising the paper gain. This include GLP, CMA and Capitaland, and this will boost my war chest as well as improve liquidity. I will be analysing and be more focussed on quality dividend counters (there is none that is interesting now).

As of today, I have received $11.1k from my equity portfolio. With dividends still coming from SPH, REITs and telcos, I will comfortably cross $12k in dividends this year.

However, it is worthy to note that without a stable income, building this will only prove more and more challenging. Which means I have to look at other streams as well......

Growing a business... It's not just tough, it's downright scary...

Ok, I am now without a job...

I can say, it's really really scary....
I'm scared...

Low income isn't scary.
No income isn't scary either.

It's scary when there's no income yet there are overheads to take care of...
It's scary when big ticket expenditure items are looming...
It's scary when I realise there is just so much to learn, to think, to ponder, to decide, and to do...

After "waking up" from my break, and deciding to work hard on the tuition business to prep for 2013, I realised there are just so many challenges waiting, so much that it could be stifling if not handled properly.